What's your favorite Darwin Award?

Question

So many stupid deaths, so little time.

Answer 1

I've got one.
I watched it happen.

My wife and I were driving through a canyon in California, heading home. We saw a man lying down on the side of the road, his head inches from the road, on the shoulder.

We stopped, on the other side of the road and called out to him, asking him if he needed any help. I mean, people don't usually lie down on the side of the freeway in an isolated canyon! He finally looked up, waved us away, repeatedly, and lacking any way to follow up, we continued on our way.

A few hundred yards down we came across a woman screaming and calling to cars that passed her. We stopped and asked if she needed help. She said that she desperately needed to get out of the canyon.

We told her we'd turn around and pick her up (as that was the direction she pointed indicating where she wanted to go and we had no schedule to keep).

We found a safe place to U turn and pulled up near her. My wife got out and went in back, giving our guest the front seat.

We asked if she was O.K., and she said that she had been left there by...(much of what she said was a blur at this point, for reasons that will become clear).

I looked in my rear mirror, pulled onto the freeway, and sped up. I had reached the speed limit and travelled a short distance when a car sped right up to my rear. Instead of crossing the double-yellow line, instead of waiting for me to pull over, he didn't slow down (at least 20 miles over the speed limit) and drove on the dirt shoulder of the road around me.

We were facing into the sun.

The man on the side of the road (you remember now?) didn't have time to do more than stand up.

The teenager's car hit him, tossed him into the air, and onto the hood of OUR car. We saw his face briefly, and then he went under the car.

We slowed and stopped on the side of the road.
So did the teen's car (thank GOD he did, I thought).

Fortunately, three other cars saw the whole thing and stopped.

The police were called, a check on the man who was hit resulted in a blanket being put over him by one of the drivers who stopped, and the police questioned everyone.

They told me, at the end, that I was the original suspect. I was surprised and asked why? Didn't the teenager who hit him tell the truth? Didn't the witnesses?

He answered that they had, including the teen, but it was the testimony of our passenger (the young woman?) which led them to suspect me. She thought that I had run over him (I had, but she thought I aimed for him).

They made clear that she was drunk, all the other witnesses saw the same thing, and that we should go home and that there was absolutely no reason to believe there would be any problems for us (though he said it with a tone that at the time I didn't understand, but now, many tearful moments later and after many years, I now do).

Then he told us the rest:

The woman passenger we had was the man's wife. They were both drunk and had had a bad fight. She had walked off and had gotten quite far down the canyon in the wrong direction (she was lost in a two-way canyon).

They had no kids.

Never will, now.

I wish I could say it was a good thing, but my own experience with it wasn't very entertaining; not like the Darwin Awards.

Be careful folks. Drive safely.

The teen gets an honorable mention. In a way, his life is over as well.

Answer 2

I liked the one last year - the guy who shot his 'boys' off when he put a bullet in the the light circuit breaker of his car when the headlighted went out.

Answer 3

Someone lived in a 7th story apartment with a balcony(yeah, you can see it already). He and his friends decided to have a spitting contest to see who could spit the farthest off of the balcony. One guy was about to spit, but decided to get a running start. He fell off and died, but he won :)

True story, I kid you not.